A view of the SAP Center, future Google village, and downtown San Jose from Air3, San Jose Police Department’s new Airbus H125 helicopter over downtown San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, July 25, 2018. Air3 replaces Air2 which was in service for 16 years, twice as long as recommended. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)

Silicon Valley tech workers line up for their shuttle bus commute in San Francisco’s Mission District Wednesday morning Nov. 12, 2014. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Gathering area next to an office building at 5490 Great America Parkway in
Santa Clara. A joint venture of Google and Johnson & Johnson has leased a
big office building in Santa Clara, marking a relocation and expansion of
the surgical robotics company.
George Avalos / Bay Area News Group

FILE – In this April 18, 2017, file photo, conference workers speak in front of a demo booth at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference, in San Jose, Calif. One of the congressional committees investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election has invited the tech giants Facebook, Twitter and the parent company of Google to appear for a public hearing on Nov. 1. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

The Genentech shuttle makes its stop at the BART-Caltrain station in Millbrae, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009. One of the things that can help solve the current transportation crisis is to have companies help connect their workers to transit centers and to their workplace. (Dan Honda/Staff)

Another anti-Trump billboard has gone up in the Bay Area, this one targeting tech workers traveling on northbound U.S. 101 in Redwood City, Calif., on Thursday, March 16, 2017. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Jared Belnap takes a closer tool at the set of Bloom Energy Servers at Ebay headquarters in San Jose Wednesday February 24, 2010 during a tour after the event unveiling the server technology. The Bloom Energy Server is a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology that provides power generation and would enable homes and businesses to generate their own electricity. The servers on the Ebay campus produce electricity to power space for 2,000 to 3,000 employees and Ebay has apparently saved $100,000 in electricity costs. (Pauline Lubens/San Jose Mercury News)

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Tech workers might seem to have it made — free meals, lavish parties, their own HBO comedy and the quarterly rush of excitement when stock option profits hit their Schwab accounts.

But are they paid enough to put roots down in the Bay Area?

About 60 percent of tech workers in an unscientific poll say “No.”

The survey by Blind, an anonymous messaging app used by thousands of tech employees, found a strong majority of techies at 13 Bay Area companies say they cannot afford to buy a home here.

Nearly 7 in 10 employees at Cisco, eBay and Intuit say they can’t break into the housing market. Even the majority of developers and supervisors at trillion-dollar valued Apple (63 percent), Facebook (51 percent) and Google (51 percent) say they can’t buy the American Dream in the Bay Area.

The survey suggests big compensation doesn’t translate into buying a Bay Area home. The median salary for Facebook employees ($240,000), Google parent Alphabet ($197,000) and Netflix ($183,000) are among the most generous in the U.S., according to a survey of 2017 compensation by Equilar.

But many feel soaring home prices have eclipsed soaring wages.

The median sales price for a home in the Bay Area last month topped $920,000. If you want to live near a major tech firm in Silicon Valley, be prepared to put in seven-figure bids and get rejected. Median sale prices in June for homes hit $1.32 million in Santa Clara County, $947,000 in Alameda County, $1.5 million in San Mateo County and $1.6 million in San Francisco.

Blind is an app allowing users to text openly about their companies — salaries, gripes, career advice and other gossip of workplace life. It claims over 10,000 users from Google, 7,100 at Facebook and 6,000 at Apple.

The voluntary survey asked one yes or no question: “I can afford to buy a house in the Bay Area.” The results were based on 2,300 responses from app users last week.

“Right now, out biggest users are tech employees,” said spokeswoman Curie Kim of the San Francisco-based Blind. “We want employees to be able to voice their opinions no matter what title they have.”

If they lived in any other place, the title might be “royalty.”

Per capita income in the Bay Area is twice the $49,246 national average.

Louis Hansen covers housing issues for the Bay Area News Group and is based at The Mercury News. He's won national awards for his investigations and feature stories. Prior to joining the organization, he was an investigative reporter at The Virginian-Pilot, where he covered state government, the military and criminal justice.